The warmth of California summer was light and lovely, the air was clear, and I could see the sea. It was a beautiful day.
I am not given to regretting. If there is repentance, better restitution than a rending of garments. But I could feel the tug from the back of my mind, that Hope had lost her father. I couldn't give Nicole back to her children, but I might be able to give Hank back to his daughter.
But I had done what I had done for good reason and I would not undo it. Not now. Probably not ever. Perhaps I couldn't even, depending on how his body and mind responded to the deep quantum realm I'd stuffed him into. I was not sure if I liked that thought more or less, but it was easier on my shoulders so it was what I ended with.
"What's the matter?" Andromeda said, finishing off a corndog as we sat in the sand of the beach.
"I'm worried about Zola's condition," I lied. I lied a lot. There was no one left I was honest with, not even myself.
"Is he- is he getting worse?" Andromeda's voice was shaking, as if asking after a beloved uncle.
"Yes," I said, without further elaboration. Zola's mind was slipping from him, he was losing words and continuity. They had unshrunken him once the symptoms became unmistakable, but it didn't do a lick of good. The wheels had come off the wagon, things would continue to label themselves to the wrong parts of his minds, the tapes would continue to fray, the noise would increase, it would end in agony and silence.
Andromeda let out a scared, sad little noise and I pulled her to me beneath the summer sun. "Oh my god, how're we going to go on without him?" Andromeda whispered from my breast.
"We must be strong like he taught us. He bound together and gave us destiny, which we are closer than ever to achieving." I said. Soft words, memories, fear, doubt - Andromeda did not want the ordinary comforts which life affords to us mortals in truth. She wanted strength, the comfort of power and destiny, the new millenarian hopes, these were what Andromeda wanted to hear in a moment like this.
Andromeda extracted herself from my chest at that, straightening up and wiping the tears from her eyes. "Of course. It's just… so hard to imagine. Zola has been our shepherd since the war."
"Then now we must be wolves," I said, my voice sure and steady. "There was never room for shepherding, the costs are too high."
Andromeda nodded, growing more confident in reflection of my bravado. "They won't be happy that he is dead. This will be a black mark for you."
"I warned Zola. If he had been satisfied with a basement, he could've lived forever in a basement. But he is Hydra, nothing less than the world could satisfy him. I will answer for my choices, but I will not answer for his."
"He is Hydra," Andromeda affirmed. Of course, Andromeda was easy to convince. When I answered to Pierce, it would probably be different.
"Still, it is not as if they could strip me of my rank. I am an integral part of the West Coast operation, worth billions of dollars, and, though I love you dearly, I do not will my goods to you upon my death." As a matter of fact, I actually willed them to Phil Coulson. Maybe my attorneys would be able to find him with a billion dollars attached to the task.
"And that's smart," Andromeda agreed. "I don't want to marry a sucker."
"Well, fool me once…"
"And shame on me for it!" Andromeda said with a laugh, before managing to look almost contrite. Not quite. No, to her, the deception was a part of the sweetness of this moment. There could be no regret for it, no sorrow. It had given her what she wanted. And it had given me what I wanted too. Hydra had cleared the field for me to raise the tech level and they'd left me to it. "But I don't want to be a weapon your rivals can use against you. Pierce and the other heads will have to work with you on this. It's a setback, but it should stay a temporary one, especially after that Senate appearance."
People were really talking about me as a senatorial candidate now, Ellis was stubbornly refusing to adjust his policy in any way that made any kind of sense (where did they find this clown?), and I was getting a bunch more bookings on talkshows to talk about the Threat to America. Of course, this particular threat was mostly fabricated, especially since I'd disposed of Pym. But given that I'd failed to derail the Space Stone's activation, I didn't feel dishonest in directly and openly stating that we were in mortal peril.
How had I managed to attack almost every single plot between arrival and Infinity War (except whatever the Dark World was), but not Infinity War itself? Of course, some of the stones were in space. I had no idea where, on the great map of the cosmos, the Soul, Power, Mind, and Reality stones were. The Time Stone was probably somewhere in New York - Or one of the other Sanctums, not that I had any idea at all where those were. But the only plausible choice for a house was locked to me and not, like, a normal door locked but blocked and protected. I guess that in however many futures the Sorcerer Supreme had walked, the ones in which we met were not the ones she was looking for.
And the Space Stone was somewhere, locked away with a bunch of geniuses for SHIELD, and I had no idea where. There were limits to what I could obtain from SHIELD's files and Pierce seemed to have deliberately cordoned Andromeda and I off from it.
"You're drifting again Mike," Andromeda said.
"Sorry Drama," I said, standing up and dusting off my trunks. I offered her a hand. "These are heavy times."
"They are," she said, grabbing my hand. "We'll face them together."
"We will," I agreed.
"So, what's the next big project?"
"Victor cracked broadcast power, so we'll be putting solar panels into geosynchronous orbit, cutting power costs down to less than half a cent per kWh."
"Goddamn, why? Why are you obsessed with pushing power costs lower?"
"Lots of ideas I have require massive amounts of energy."
"Like?"
"Blasters, sustainable shields, robot drone armies. But mostly, interstellar travel."
I laughed at the look on Andromeda's face as I got into my car.